The present invention pertains to two-way mobile communication devices and, more particularly, to a user-interface for a two-way mobile communications device.
For people and businesses requiring instant access to information, the Internet and intranets have provided a vehicle for near real-time delivery of information from an enormous number of sources. For many of those same individuals, two-way mobile communication devices, such as cellular phones, two-way pagers, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), Personal Information Managers (PIMs), and handheld computing devices, have provided a way communicating irrespective of locality. In recent years, these two rapidly-growing technologies have come together, such that the two-way mobile communication device has become one of many entry points into the Internet and intranets.
Devices used as vehicles to the Internet (or Intranets) generally have some features in common, whether they sit on a desktop or are held in the palm of the hand. One feature such devices may have in common is that they are used to display hypermedia content such as web pages. To do so, network servers and network personal computers (PCs) normally use standard web protocols and mark-up languages, such as Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), respectively. Mobile devices generally use wireless protocols, such as Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) or Handheld Device Transport protocol (HDTP), and wireless markup languages, such as Wireless Markup Language (WML) and Handheld Device Markup Language (HDML), to accomplish the same task.
One problem associated with using mobile devices in this manner is the lack of user-friendliness of the user interface of many such devices. Because these devices are designed to be mobile, they normally have very compact keypads with 14 to 24 keys and very small displays. These restrictions exist because the subject mobile devices have to be able to fit into the palm of the hand and have to be relatively inexpensive.
For a device to gain a wide market in this venue, it must meet the needs of the intended users, and it must be easy to use. On a conventional PC, locating hypermedia content (e.g., a Web page) on the Internet or an intranet is a relatively easy task. Hypermedia content is generally located by the user specifying a Uniform Resource Locators (URL) in some manner, such as by typing it using a standard keyboard or by pointing to a hypermedia anchor (link) using a pointing device. However, as noted above, mobile devices generally do not include a standard keyboard or display. Unfortunately, most URLs include characters and phrases that can be difficult to input without a full-sized standard keyboard. For example, many URLs begin with xe2x80x9chttp://xe2x80x9d and end with xe2x80x9c.comxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9c.orgxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9c.govxe2x80x9d. It can be burdensome and annoying for a user to have to enter these special phrases, one character at a time, each time the user wants to input a URL. Furthermore, some of these characters do not have a phone key equivalent, such as xe2x80x9c/xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9c:xe2x80x9d, and xe2x80x9c.xe2x80x9d Hence, these characters may be assigned to a key that is less apparent to the user.
The present invention includes a mobile communication device having a display and a set of user input controls and a method of operating such a device. In the method, a number of hypermedia identifier fragments are stored, and information specifying a correspondence between each of the hypermedia identifier fragments and one of the user input controls is maintained. In response to receiving a single user input at one of the user input controls, the information is used to select one of the stored hypermedia identifier fragments. The hypermedia identifier fragments may be Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) fragments, such as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) fragments.